Paul Ganssle on The Barker Ganssle Family

The Proposal

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 14:08:32 -0500

Back in the distant past (Fall 2007), I was a supplemental instructor (SI)¹ for Chemistry 475 (Quantum Mechanics and Spectroscopy). I was also far too cool for school and fancied myself an iconoclast, so when I had to go to a training for new SIs, I decided that it was pointless indoctrination and I shouldn’t have to take it seriously in any way²; I got some Dr Pepper and surreptitiously replaced ~20% of the volume with some sort of alcoholic liquid and tried to have fun.

Chord Identification Method Trainer: Experience after Three Weeks

Mon, 12 Jun 2023 09:50:34 -0400

A few months ago, I saw a post on Hacker News about a study out of a Japanese music school (PDF) that claims to have a high success rate teaching children aged 2-6 to have perfect pitch. Their method involves associating the chords with colored flags and quizzing the children 4-5x daily for about 2 minutes per session. If it works, this seems like a cool skill to have, particularly since our kids seem fairly interested in music; Max is about to age out of the range of the study, so I figured I should make it a priority to get started sooner rather than later.

Review of Antfire Bike Tail Lights

Sun, 12 Feb 2023 13:20:07 -0500

This is a review of Antfire Bike Tail Lights, which I bought as turn signals to use on my Urban Arrow Family bike.

I picked this one because it seemed like the best set of blinkers that had both front and back blinkers. I have an Urban Arrow cargo bike (huge bike), and I’ve been riding it in the winter, so I have a set of WOBS bike gloves to keep my hands warm. I don’t like taking my hands in and out of these things while biking and turning, so I don’t want to use my hands for signaling.

2022 Year In Review

Sun, 29 Jan 2023 17:13:30 -0500

Normally we like to put a few highlights of our year into our Holiday Card¹, but this year we realized that 2022 had way too much happen in it to fit everything in a single card (even a multi-fold one like the one we picked out), so we figured we’d write up our year on the website for those who are curious about the everything that happened.

⚠️ Caution ⚠️ : The standard caveat for this server applies. This website is hosted on a server using my home connection, and this is a fairly image-heavy post, and links to a few image galleries, so loading all the images may require some patience.

The Briefcase

Sun, 27 Feb 2022 13:19:53 -0500

One of the funnier things to me is to come across some tableau that tells a strange and confusing story. For example, if I were to come across an expensive suit that had been modified to have 4 arms instead of 2, and in the pockets was a partially used gift card to a bait-and-tackle shop, I’d be tickled trying to imagine what led to this outcome. Is this a Halloween costume? If so, why use an expensive suit? Why would you be buying fishing equipment in your Halloween costume? Does this person have some sort of mechanical arms that they use when fishing, and for some reason they wanted to wear them with this particular expensive suit? And what caused them to abandon it, gift cards and all?